Are 'Old Farts' Really Blocking New Voices?

In recent years, there's been much chatter about so-called 'Old Farts' acting as gatekeepers within the indie horror community. The narrative goes that these seasoned authors, publishers, or influencers wield exceptional and undue power, keeping fresh talent at bay and holding the keys to success tightly in their grasp. But is this really the case, or is the situation more nuanced than it appears at first glance?

It's undeniable that, as in any sphere, a handful of established figures in indie horror maintain strong networks and platforms. They might prefer working with familiar names or may be slow to embrace newcomers. This can give the impression of a closed circle, leading to frustration for those trying to break in. However, it would be misleading to claim that this dynamic is the prevailing force shaping an author's trajectory in the genre.

The truth is, while pockets of gatekeeping do exist, those maintained by the ‘Old Farts’ are far from universal. The indie horror scene is vast and continually evolving, with new communities, small presses, and grassroots initiatives springing up all the time. Many of these are not only accessible to emerging writers but actively seek out fresh voices and diverse perspectives. Social media, online forums, and indie publishing platforms have democratised access in ways that simply weren't possible a decade ago.

It’s also true that gatekeeping is not the sole dominion of the elders, as there are many groups etc out there that gatekeep for a variety of reasons, including some that prevent old farts and other demographics from taking part.

For every group or anthology that seems 'locked down', there are countless others searching for new talent. Open submission calls, online writing communities, and self-publishing opportunities mean that the barriers to entry are lower than ever before. Authors can build their own audiences, connect with like-minded peers, and carve out their own space without having to wait for validation from the old guard as it has never truly been needed, people just assume it was.

Ultimately, the notion of insurmountable gatekeeping in indie horror is more myth than reality. Yes, there are cliques and established circles, as there are in any creative field, but they do not define the limits of what is possible. With persistence, creativity, and a willingness to seek out open doors, writers can find their place, or even create their place, and thrive in this vibrant, ever-expanding community.

Welcome to the Q&A section of the joexyoung.com forums. Here, my aim is to gradually build a comprehensive reference hub featuring the most frequently asked questions about the world of horror, whether you're curious about writing chilling stories and novels, navigating the path to publication, or exploring the broader landscape of the genre.

This evolving knowledge base will eventually cover all aspects of horror, extending well beyond publishing to include topics such as the history of horror, subgenres, influential authors, film adaptations, and the cultural impact of the macabre. No corner of the horror universe is off limits as this entire site is dedicated to it and the Q&A will often provide links to the relevant information with more in-depth responses.

For example, you might find questions like:

How do I craft an effective atmosphere of suspense in my horror writing?

Brief answer: Focus on sensory details and pacing. Use description to build tension gradually and let your characters react authentically to their fears.

FIRST DRAFTS AND REWRITES

What are the best ways to submit a horror novel to publishers?

Brief answer: Research publishers who specialise in your type of horror, follow their submission guidelines closely, and consider seeking representation from a literary agent familiar with the genre.

PUBLISHING SECTION

What are some lesser-known subgenres of horror?

Brief answer: Subgenres include cosmic horror, folk horror, splatterpunk, and psychological horror, each with its own unique conventions and appeal.

WHO WRITES THIS?

How has horror evolved in film and literature over the decades?

Brief answer: Horror has adapted to social changes and technological advances, shifting from Gothic tales to modern psychological and body horror, while continually reinventing classic themes.

GETFLIX 'N' KILL

The site has so many categories that it would be overwhelming to go into all of the section here, but I reckon you get the general idea of what it's all about.

Feel free to ask your own questions or share insights into what you want to know about that's not already covered, as together, we can make this a valuable resource for horror enthusiasts at every level for every aspect of horror.

I've been interviewed a few times, but I've been asked to do quite a lot more than I accepted, and I'm going to be totally honest about why that is... 

Even though the presence of this site, especially this section of it, and my general infiltration of the indie horror community might suggest otherwise, I am actually quite a reserved person. In real life I keep myself and my 'stuff' private. I've never attended a horror convention, and only ever met one person from the indie horror community in real life in spite of being deeply involved in it behind the scenes for years. The guy in question was Mark Tullius, who was attending the Frankfurt Buchmesse (One of the World's largest book fairs). He knew I live in Frankfurt so he sent me tickets to attend so I could meet him, which I did. I mean, in spite of me rarely mingling with the public there are times when it just seems to be the right thing to do, especially as I have a little something in one of his anthologies.

Regarding turning down interviews, it's not the case that I think I am above such things, more the reverse as I don't consider myself that interesting, and didn't want to do interviews which had very little substance or relevance to the communities and/or topics involved, especially as one of the words most commonly used when my name turns up in conversation is 'Who?'


I've been invited onto a few podcasts, some audio, others video, and my shy nature rebelled, keeping me 'off air' because as well as reckoning that I don't have much of interest to say, I'm also somewhat wary of my physical condition. I avoid cameras wherever possible. However, as with meeting people in 'real life' there are certain things I will need to change in order to evolve. So I'm getting braver these days and having interviews, so far not on screen, but I have done one audio interview mostly regarding my thoughts on A.I. (I'll include it in this section).

A little while ago I was asked by CC Adams to be part of his series of interviews regarding 'Game', in which we discuss my approach to what I do and the reasons behind it. I'll include a link to that in this section too.

There are other interviews with me out there, though those are not so much about me as they are about things I have done, such as explaining about the 'get Writing Horror' facebook group in an issue of Phantasmagoria magazine, and doing the same sort of thing, this time about this website, for the first issue of Horrorsmith: The Magazine.

To those whose offer of an interview I rejected or said 'maybe someday', it wasn't an outright snub, more the case of thinking I had nothing much to say that your audience would want to know about.

In this section I'll put the interviews I've done so far, and if I get the chance to do any more I'll put those here too.

I've just been reminded by a member post that there was in fact a member post, which surprised me a little as I launched this site almost two months ago and it now has around 70 members, but very little interaction in the main site forums, though the 'Facebook style' area called the 'Nooseroom' has seen a little more.

Was I expecting better? Actually, no. From the beginning when I was discussing the need and potential I knew that it wasn't going to be something that everyone flocked to. I'm realistic, and have said openly all along that it's not like in the film 'Field of Dreams' where, to paraphrase the movie's most famous line "if I build it, they will come". Though if you are reading this then you obviously did. The reason for believing that it was never going to be an instant success? The 'Facebook Habit', which applies to all of the mainstream social media platforms, as that's where people default to when they go online. I can't blame them, it's what they've become accustomed to doing, and it's where their friends and family hang out, so I didn't set this site up with the intent of taking on the giants, just as a resource for people who need help, and I added a social aspect for those who are sick of the bullshit that mainstream social media rams down their throats on a daily basis.

I've said elsewhere on this site about the origin of it, so I won't bang on about that here, suffice to say that I'm happy to continue plodding along with building it bigger as I am sure that word will eventually get around and people will get out of it the very things that they were saying they wanted and needed. The one thing that I can say about it quite categorically is that even if nobody except myself ever used it, it still wouldn't be a failure as it's a repository of everything that I know, everything I feel, and everything that I have accumulated that is of any value to the horror writing community, and as such I am already using it to help others because when they have a problem they talk about on other social media I often have the solution somewhere on my site, so it's easy enough for me to reference it without having to articulate anew.

TALKING OF PLODDING...

Over the past few years I've repeatedly asked people to supply their 'business information', such as publishers sending me their backlists, I'm not talking actually sending me copies of their books etc, just the info of what they have published, so that I can add it to my various databases and link to them in order that anyone looking can see what the publishers have on offer and click to go to where to buy them. One might assume that publishers would jump at the chance to have free advertising like that, but having asked four times a year for four years, with no response, I'm reluctant to ask again.

There are certain publishers in the community with whom I have, or have had, a 'closer working relationship', so I'll add them first as a courtesy, but as for the others, I'll drip those out when I have the inclination, because in all honesty I'm not a fan of wasting my time on 'help me to help you' posts which result in tumbleweeds. Now I know that there are other aspects to this, such as publishers not having seen the posts, but that's not what I am talking about here. Nor am I talking about the current lack of interaction making it pointless for them to send me their info as hardly anyone will see it, because that is a 'Catch 22' situation. If they send the info I have reference points, and those points can be shared on mainstream social media, so the readers get the books, the publishers get the sales, everyone wins. The publishers don't want to spend their valuable time sending me an inventory list, and I can't share what I don't have. When I first asked, I had a few publishers say it was a great idea, and they'd be happy to, BUT they would send it to me AFTER the site is done. That leaves me in a position where it would take me a lot of time to hunt for and compile all of that info which they already have on file and could easily just email to me.

Imagine if you will, a McDonalds franchise. The foundation was put down and the restaurant itself has been built from the ground up, brick by brick, furnished, completed, staff have been hired, and it has opened to the public, but the suppliers of the patties, buns, fries etc have said "We'll see how well business goes BEFORE we send you any actual food to cook". That to me is the same thing as I am experiencing here.

Right now I have a huge and fully-equipped kitchen, but I can't sell burgers I don't have, so I am in a position where I have to go and get the beef to grind, bake the buns etc etc to attract the customers so that I can show the people with something to sell that there are people who want to buy what they have. 

SUPPORT NETWORKS?

That whole thing doesn't just apply to my site, it's kind of universal. I've done a 'deep dive' into the whole community and it's sad to see just how much support people want, but just how little support they will give.

For example, a few months ago the reviewer Kayleigh Dobbs was a few hundred subscribers away from getting the 1,000 needed for monetization of her 'Happy Goat Horror' YouTube channel (though monetization was never her goal). I decided to give the channel a push on a few of the Social Media channels, and as a result she got over the 1,000 subscribers mark faster than she would have otherwise done, which is not to say that it's solely because of my intervention, but she has publicly stated that it did help. Since Kayleigh hit the 1,000 subscribers she has also seen a dramatic rise in visits to the 'Happy Goat Horror' website. After around four years she had hit the 50,000 views mark, however, a month later she hit 100,000.

Any ideas about what made THAT happen?

YouTube makes a difference to search stats, as does 'chatter', and I helped to create some of that, which has helped her channels and her site stats grow. It took posting about Kayleigh and Happy Goat Horror, it took sharing the occasional post from her YouTube, but those actions had actual measurable value. Now I can't say for certain what is behind all of it, but it looks as if Kayleigh is having a great time creating even more content as it seems like she's posting so many more reviews, articles, and interviews than she used to, so my guess is that she's believing that her efforts are worth it because she's getting viewers and feedback.

There are loads of YouTubers who have small channels, but hardly any of them have anywhere near 1,000 subscribers, and when anyone wants to promote their books they target the bigger channels because those are the ones with the most eyeballs on them.

Isn't it logical to help the smaller channels to grow into bigger ones? That way you get your word out there without being in competition with bigger names who are going to be preferable to the bigger channels.

That brings me full-circle to this site.

It'll grow.

The more you talk about it, the more you share it, the faster it grows and the more eyeballs you'll get on your stuff as a result.

To me that's a sensible move. But I would say that as I'm biased ;)

Laydeez and Gennelmen and others of varying identifications…

Roll up, roll up, see the amazing solo authorpreneur as he tries to keep dozens of plates spinning at the same time!

Gasp in awe at the host with the most, the Carnie with the Blarney…

Watch the mindset of pandering to corporate thinking, discover why you might just be approaching advertising from the wrong end of things.

Marvel at the suggestions of a different way of attracting an audience…

This way now, plenty of room, no waiting, no tickets required…

The corporations are big; they spend billions of dollars each year trying to get bigger by pushing themselves in front of you everywhere you look,

and they have spent many millions of dollars on market-research telling them that spamming the shit out of your day is great visibility.

If it works for them, then surely it’ll work for you, am I right?

Well, yes, and no.

Yes, because advertising works. You may have the greatest product in the world, but if people don’t know about it they will not be buying it, so it’s better to have at least some advertising than to have none, and no, because they are seeking a global audience which is distributed everywhere randomly, and often their audience isn’t a niche one as it’s the ‘everyone’ because their product isn’t tailored to a particular subset of an already small community, which is where horror authors make a huge mistake. They believe that advertising everywhere gives them a ‘catch all’ when for the most part it makes them come across as obnoxious and they don’t understand it when they get blocked. I’ve seen horror authors advertising in places where the likelihood of a sale is minimal (It’s never nil), and some spend a shed-load of money each year on all kinds of tracking services and software in their desperation to learn where their audience is.

The truth about their audience is that it’s possible for it to be a lot closer than they may think.

Once upon a long ago, I worked a few summers in a static Fairground in a small town. We weren’t advertising because that was something the owners hadn’t considered worthwhile due to the location, as it was near the central car park and the bus and coach stations, and one aspect of it, the Helter Skelter (one of the seven sideshows I worked on), was visible from a lot of areas of the town as it stood above the basic landscape. Most of the trade, even in the main holiday season, was local kids, but aside from when it came to the arcade games, they were not big spenders.

My first year there I saw that there were people leaving their vehicles, giving a casual glance toward the fairground, and going elsewhere. I wanted to catch them, so I would run across to the car park and offer free rides on the Helter Skelter which sometimes resulted in an immediate visit to my stalls but more often met with a refusal or promise to drop in on the way back. Usually with the Helter Skelter it was a set price for two goes, but most kids enjoyed it so much that they wanted to go more, and often the parents would refuse because of the cost. I waved the ‘two rides’ rule (but left it on the signs) and told the parents that I would do a deal with them, for the cost of FOUR rides their kids could have UNLIMITED rides. That would tire them out and make them easier to deal with, and the parents could relax more.

The parents loved that.

My boss wasn’t so keen. However, what he didn’t realise at first was that while the kids were going up and down the Helter Skelter until they were fit to drop, the parents were waiting around and were sitting ducks for me to get them to try several of the other side-shows, so the money we lost giving the free rides was nothing compared to the money we made from the parents. There was also another useful bonus. Seeing and hearing lots of children having fun was a huge draw to anyone just arriving at the car park. It encouraged much needed foot-traffic.

In the first few weeks of my first season at the fairground I was ‘promoted’, put in charge of the seven sideshows and told I could do whatever I wanted ‘within reason’, and so, with a few adjustments to the way the sideshows worked, I trebled the usual seasonal ‘take’.

What has this got to do with corporate thinking and writing novels?

My way of dealing with things wasn’t to launch a massive and expensive ad campaign, nothing in the newspapers, nothing on the radio, just taking what we already had in the surrounding foot-traffic and making the Fairground more appealing to them.

Before the second season I re-painted the Helter Skelter in more vibrant colours and decked it out with a lot more lights so it could be clearly visible and better illuminate the words ‘Helter Skelter’.

We had ‘The Cans’ which was along the same principle as a ‘coconut shy’ but knocking soda cans off a shelf. Over time, the cans would rust, get dented/tear and be sharp to handle, so I got some 2 inches by 1 inch wood, cut it into short lengths, painted the pieces with Hammerite’ (a highly durable paint), arranged them on the shelf the same way we arranged the cans and named it ‘Stonehenge’.

Result?

No more cuts from the soda cans. Even though the targets were larger, they were harder to knock off the shelf as they weighed more and fell flat on the shelf without rolling off. It presented more of a challenge, but rather than people ignoring it as it was more difficult, they tried harder to do it.

Why?

Two reasons, the first of which being that some people just want to clear it (Especially when the attendant is pitting one person against another, because a lot of people are highly competitive). The second reason is that I had made sure that with the increase in difficulty, there was also an increase in the value of the prizes. I had put things there which people would actually want to win rather than the usual junk. Okay, it was more expensive up-front to buy the premium prizes, but we made a generous profit overall.

That season, following those tweaks and a few more, I trebled the take again. So in that season I had increased the boss’s profits by 9 times his original best season’s income.

I’m arrogant enough to believe that had I been able to give the entire Fairground a ‘makeover’ I could have made it better for everyone. I certainly would have chucked out the Billy Joel cassette that was played on a loop (sorry Billy) and played something more fitting to the environment such as some 1950s hits or kept it contemporary with 1980s pop tunes (I worked there in the mid-80s.)

I’ve applied the same way of thinking to a lot of things throughout my life, and the results have been consistent.

Apply that same thinking to writing horror and what do I arrive at?

Facebook is the ‘people trap’; it’s the one Social Media outlet that represents ‘most of the horror book buying population’. The difficulty being that it also represents everyone else, the vast majority of whom have no interest in what we are selling, but still we try to sell to them with big campaigns and ‘targeted ads’ which are still fairly random and don’t reach enough of our target audience as it’s so heavily controlled.

It’s not the ONLY Social Media platform though, but the others are equally restrictive and not tailored to our niche.

In order to maximise the potential to create a viable ‘sales arena’ we really need our own platform to do what Facebook used to do, but without the added bullshit and problems it now has. Such a site could encourage authors to come and ply their trade, but could also attract the buyers who are interested in what we have on offer. The reading public just need to know that we are here.

This is where we’ve always been at a disadvantage, because the usual ‘sales model’ is to treat selling our books as if we have the book equivalent of an ‘Ice-Cream Van’ and are going to different neighbourhoods, sounding out our chimes to attract attention, then hoping that someone will ‘stop us and buy one’.

If you are ‘static’ such as the Fairground, you need to bring the people to you. Regular bookstores do this effectively, some better than others, but still have the separation that they cover a broad spectrum, so if there’s a horror section at all it’s generally catering to a few of the big names and doesn’t support Indie authors and sub-genres. Bricks and mortar ‘Niche’ bookstores are quite rare, horror specialists more so. Even online horror bookstores are scarce and often under-stocked.

In the last two years we in the Indie genre circuit have seen the rise of Godless.com. It is highly successful in giving Indie horror authors a sales platform and has helped launch several fledgling careers so far. Although, as things stand, it has a primarily ‘extreme’ author leaning, it sells books from across the horror spectrum and is building its clientele of both authors and readers weekly. It proves that people want horror, but there are far more people wanting horror than are aware of the existence of sites such as Godless.com and the one you’re on right now, and it’s that awareness that needs to change.

We, as the horror community, need to paint OUR Helter Skelter. More and brighter lights need to be hung higher. We need to change the music to something our audience will respond to and rather than scour every lonely corner of the internet hoping to find readers; we need to bring them to our Fairground, where they can easily find everything they want and more.

Something which is very apparent is that we all want the same things, we want to be successful, and that means having a greater visibility and more sales as a result. A big problem is that a lot of people know that, but still believe that it’s someone else’s job to make it easier for them.

The truth of the matter is that Godless.com exists, and the owner, Drew Stepek, advertises it as much as possible, but he could create a much bigger platform with far more readers visiting it if YOU told people about it. Why should you help him to grow his sales platform? Because it’ll benefit YOU to do so as the more people you send there the more potential sales you make.

MY site would have a bigger membership with more readers seeing your stuff if YOU shared it with other people, but it’s my site, my responsibility, so I should be the one advertising it, it’s none of your business, am I right?

WRONG!

YOUR sales can be helped by MY platform. The bigger this grows, the more likely you are to benefit from it.  So if you know horror readers, horror reviewers, horror publishers, and even other horror authors who haven’t heard about this site yet, give them a yell.

Now, before anyone contacts me and says that the word ‘Hierarchy’ is not properly spelled in the image, obviously I know that. The image is from a post that was made to one of my Facebook groups quite a while ago and spelling error aside, it struck me as a good subject for discussion.

In the field of Indie Publishing (and life in general) there are always going to be accusations of favouritism, of certain people being given preferential treatment through association rather than ability. One only has to grab almost any anthology in recent years to see that there’s a lot of truth to what is depicted in the image.

A great many of us will have seen the comments on Social Media surrounding new releases or even just general conversations in which writers voice their discontent with Publishers who have a ‘Stable’ of writers. I would consider it safe to say that the majority of the anthology publishers I am aware of have them, not just anthologies either, magazines have them, but in all fairness they are often considered ‘Staff Writers’, I know that because I kinda sorta am one.

1/ PUBLISHER

The party organiser throwing a bash for the rich and famous.

The accusations here are that there are publishers whose writing would be rejected by any quality publisher, but who know how to play the system. They set themselves up as publishers, because, let’s face it, anyone can these days, and they put out an ‘open call’ which isn’t usually all that open as they will already have approached their favourite celebrity authors as well as their immediate social circle of friends. The intent here is seemingly to surround themselves with the great and the good, and by association imply that they are of a similar stature.

Guess what… It often works!

I have a lot of respect for those few publishers out there who can put out an anthology without shoving their own stories in it.

2/ CLIQUE.

It ain’t what you know, it’s who you know.

Ah, one of my favourite bones of contention. Undeniable. Some publishers even admit to having a stable of writers, though the reasons they give (if at all) vary only slightly. It’s usually the case that they declare a % of their writers are people whose work they know to be of a certain consistent quality, and the writers themselves are easy to deal with.

I can actually see the logic there as it’s common sense to not want to have stories from 30 different authors which then have to have a shedload of work done on them while the writers are arguing the toss over their artistic vision, with accusations every step of the way, that the editing is ruining their voice.

There are often spaces for the general public in the open calls, but they are relatively few. I know examples of anthologies having a slew of the usual suspects, with as little as a single spot for one lucky recipient. This (IMHO) is disgraceful, but hey, it’s their choice. It does raise the question of how the hell new talent is going to get recognition when the anthologists only recycle established writers.

A note about ‘Staff Writers’, I did mention earlier that I kinda sorta am one even though it’s unofficial. I have articles and reviews in a couple of dozen issues of Phantasmagoria Magazine. Am I in every issue? NO. Is my name ever on the cover? NO. I’m basically an ‘also ran’ in that stable, but there nonetheless. Magazines generally do have a stable of regular writers as it lends continuity, but that’s something I don’t see a reason for with anthologies, yet there are entire series of them from certain publishers in which the same names always crop up, as if it’s a given that they’ll be in every publication. I’d love to see more emerging writers given a chance, but unless I begin publishing anthologies I’ll just have to keep my pie hole shut as it’s none of my business.

3/ FAMOUS NAMES.

Yeah, I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna be a ‘name-dropper’. Somewhere on an external hard-drive I have a ‘bucket list’ Excel File of authors I wanted to appear in anthologies alongside of. It was a great inspirational checklist, it gave me something to strive for as I believed that being included would mean that my work was considered to be good enough, and I actually began to achieve the goals, so yay me! My work has appeared alongside the likes of Clive Barker, Joe R. Lansdale, Jack Ketchum, Graham Masterton and so many others that it could make your head spin. I’d resurrect the list to tick the Stephen King box, but other than that… Nah!

Okay, so it could be said that getting celebs on board is a common-sense business move, even if they demand a significant fee for their story, as they bring their fan base with them, but that’s not always the case. Example: I have a story in someone’s charity anthology, it has a lot of ‘household names’ in it, one of the biggest has a fan club which I contacted about their idol’s inclusion in the anthology. As is usually the case, the big names don’t supply new stories, and this particular tale was one which had appeared in several other publications over decades, as such I was informed that it was of very little interest to the fan club as it only really appealed to the ‘completists’. Unless the celebs provide a previously unseen work, then bartering off their name doesn’t really do much, as their readers don’t generally give a damn who else is in the anthology. We’re just a bunch of nobodies to them, and I do see their point.

Who am I?

Nobody.

Sure, I can write a half-decent story, or even a great one on occasion or else I wouldn’t have made it into so many anthologies and publications, as they are usually not desperate for ‘filler’, but, when it comes to writing chops, mine is not a name spoken of with reverence among horror writers, in fact it’d be safe to say that a considerable amount of my peers know me from the groups I run and are unaware that I write horror at all. So being in those anthologies really didn’t achieve diddly-squat. When I began noticing the utter lack of advantage I gained from hobnobbing with the best in the field, I stopped filling in the Excel File as I am no longer quite as delusional.

That was really just MY experience though, and for those of you who bother to milk it for whatever advantage you believe it offers, your mileage may vary, but good luck with that! I just believe it’s a lot of work attempting to get acclaim by association for almost no return, except, of course, if you’re the publisher inviting everyone to your party, as at least you’ll be known to the big names, even if only temporarily.

4/WELL KNOW NAMES.

We’re not talking about the Clive Barker sorts here, but these are by no means ‘lesser’ writers, they just have lacked the mainstream celebrity. There are some of course who are the staples of the community, always reliable when it comes to delivering scares on the regular, and submitting to just about everything that pays professional rates. Who can blame them, they are the ones treating it all as a business and attempting to get a leg-up by having as much work in the open as possible. They are some of the best bets for the more discerning publishing cliques as they will have a wide and active following with which they are still likely to engage as they’re not famous enough to be aloof and will be willing to accept the standard pay rates without the publisher having to negotiate.

5/ UNDER-CLIQUE.

The ‘Second Stringers’. I’m going to be cruel here and say that these poor buggers are the ones who wouldn’t be given a second glance by any publisher who is looking to pay the writers a decent rate, but as they are on the outskirts of the main clique, are absolutely a go-to when it comes down to bulking out charity anthologies. Get yourself an open call, 30 stories (a couple of those being recycled antiques from celebs), a few minor league previously published ones, a couple from any of your buddies who just want to be supportive of the cause even though they’re not earning from it, and the other 20 can be from nature’s little slush-pile of enthusiastic supporters hoping to get their asses off the bench and willing to do so even though they’re not going to be compensated in any way other than having another cover on their Amazon shelf.

6/ FRIENDS OF THE UNDER-CLIQUE.

The publisher has a site or group etc. They hang with a specific crowd. They publish their regulars and the benchwarmers, but even the benchwarmers have friends, and sometimes those friends can work up the bottle to send a story in to the open call. Sometimes it’ll even be a decent enough story to get into the anthology, but the odds are against it as there’s been no schmoozing with the publisher’s inner-circle. When all is said and done at least there’s a chance of visibility there, the potential to show up on the radar via a well timed comment or full-on conversation. It could happen.

7/ YOU.

If only you had been a member of the group. If only you had known about their website. If only they had extended the ‘open call’ to be truly open instead of it just being announced among their friends, then maybe YOU might have stood a chance.

DREAM ON.

Of course there ARE examples of publishers who travel outside of their circle of friends and have a truly open call, even though the very nature of Social Media outlets is generally restrictive as they want you to pay to reach as much of your ‘friend list’ or ‘fan page’ as possible, and even more to get your post into the general population. The likes of Facebook are actively preventing the open calls from being seen by those outside of the people you interact with the most, encouraging the cliques to take root as there’s sometimes the misconception on the publisher’s side of things that there’s a general lack of interest in their anthology offerings.

Some just don’t have the reach without paying a lot of hard-earned cash out to ‘Boost’ the posts, which if they are putting together a charity anthology isn’t going to help the donation balance. There are of course the bigger professional publishers who can crowdfund their budgets up-front, and that in itself will often draw a lot of attention and impetus from the wider community to submit stories.

CONCLUSION:

Make your own mind up. There ARE anthology publishers who are so clique infested that it’s hardly worth the effort, but that doesn’t mean that it’ll be a total waste of time trying. You never know, you might get lucky.

GAME OF THRONES.

I watched the whole thing. Okay, so the ending wasn’t all that it could be, but overall the show was good enough to have held my attention, which given that I rarely watch Fantasy is a big deal.

According to an article I read recently that’s 70 Hours and 14 minutes, or just under three days of my life in total spent watching a fantasy tv show. That’s without watching any extras, re-watching bits to see the carnage again.

So, three days in which I could have done…

Anything else.

Am I saying that it was a waste of time, no, I am fine with it. I work a lot, sometimes it’s good to put my feet up and watch some stuff, especially when I tend to watch things after my day is done and I can view before going to sleep, I also put certain shows on another monitor, so I can ‘work’ and watch at the same time, which is okay if I’m just sorting files and the show doesn’t need eyes on it at all times.

However, there’s a particular breed of person I have encountered who complains incessantly about never finding the time to write, BUT most of those same people will post about binge-watching an entire series on Netflix in one evening, or having a mammoth gaming session, or spending every night of the week getting drunk.

Each to their own I guess, and we all have our own ways of relaxing at the end of a hard day.

‘Netflix and Chill’ is fine in theory, but as someone who doesn’t have a Netflix account I find the prospect a little scary as it’s too easy for me to trawl through the 17,000 International Titles available on its service and find something which will stop me in my tracks and enable me to watch a long-lost favourite movie or show, or something new and interesting. Can I afford the time to do that? Well, yes, BUT I shouldn’t. Life’s too short, and I have a lot of things I could do with my time which would be more profitable not only financially, but in my general ‘feelgood factor’ of accomplishment.

Do I have any streaming services at all? No.

How about gaming? No.

I have a couple of PS3s I use as blue ray players, a whole bunch of games I’ve never played, and I have a very large collection (thousands) of movies and tv shows, most of which I’ve not watched. They are my ‘retirement activity, just in case I ever get decrepit enough to not want to sit at a keyboard every day.

I also have a few thousand unread books, which I dip into when I can.

To me the books give the greater gratification. Reading them, writing them… Nothing quite like books.

The website you’re currently on is my deviation from fiction, were it not for creating and maintaining this place I would have achieved a lot more in my personal reading/writing evolution. I’m of the opinion though that this whole thing hasn’t been procrastination, it hasn’t been ‘a waste of time’, and I am most certainly not going to complain about it.

I’m not going to complain about people using their time for whatever the hell they want to, it is after all their time to use, and we all need a little ‘downtime’ once in a while.

I just tire of seeing writers saying that they never have the time to write when they have spent months of their lives Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Priorities people… Priorities!

“Are you sitting comfortably ‘Grasshopper’?

Then let us begin.

The world of genre fiction in relation to Social Media is beset with many a dumpster fire.

They rage, oh, how they rage!

With so many seemingly harmless looking people strutting around with a bottle of accelerant and a Zippo, searching for something which they can set on fire and walk away from with a big shit-eating-grin on their faces. It’s all part of the rich tapestry of internet existence, the intricately woven patterns of good and kind people going about their days with hope in their hearts, while some fuckwit with spiked boots prepares to trample on them for the sole reason that… They can. Often that’s all that they need in order to start a dumpster fire, because, to paraphrase what a wise Butler once said in a Batman movie “Some people just want to watch the world burn”.  This is not to say that all dumpster fires begin the same way, as there are many cases where disagreements have started over very important issues, but it seems these days that for every rational person willing to discuss a subject in a polite manner, there are a dozen hostile assholes just looking to browbeat you into submission.”

“Do you have personal experience of this, Master Po?”

“Well, it’s funny you should ask Grasshopper, as I do indeed have experience of such things…

There was an ‘Open Call’, the payment information for which was vague enough that I asked for simple clarification. ‘Do you pay the writers?’ I asked. There was nothing more, no insinuation, no accusation.”

“A simple thing, Master Po!”

“Ah, Grasshopper, you have much to learn, for what is, on the surface, a simple thing, may in fact run much deeper, for the person from whom I requested the information had encountered previous criticism and by all accounts was publicly attacked, and so suspected that I was going to create a similar issue. It was not my intent. Rather than merely state a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’, the person responded with a lengthy statement, defending their entire publishing history.”

“WTF Master Po!”

“‘What The Fuck’ indeed Grasshopper, and so it was that I attempted to reason things out, to get to the reality of the payment situation without an escalation, but alas that was not to be, as colleagues of the person decided to assist in the discussion, with accusations of my intent to destroy their publication and further accusations that I was not so much a group owner but a ‘cult leader’, amid one person’s statements that she would ‘take me down, no matter what’. This, as several more of their colleagues attempted to join the group in order to defend their colleague and challenge me.”

“For asking if a publication pays? Talk about ‘overkill'”

“Indeed Grasshopper,  but let us never forget that when people have struggled through adversity to create something that they believe in, passions can run hot. I remained calm, and rather than throw more fuel on the fire, approached things in a civilised manner. Those troops awaiting at the gate were denied access, and those within were dealt with according to their actions. Those who remained in opposition to me yet civil were fine, as I allow criticism of myself to flow as a river over me. One of them was less than civil about others in the group, and so was escorted to the gates and banished. In the matter of the publication, it was all a misunderstanding, and one which has since been resolved. Had a simple answer been given to the simple question then all of the hostilities could have been avoided, as for the most part they are good people, they just got off on the wrong foot.”

“I am glad to hear that, Master Po. Are there other such instances you could recount?”

“Far too many Grasshopper, but I shall tell you a tale of a boy, this dumpster fire was in a group which I was also a lowly member of. One day he made a couple of requests, first of all he had written a book, and asked for opinions on it. However, as is common for those with so little experience, he was not seeking honesty as much as he sought praise.

At the same time as asking for said praise he requested help with a personal situation. Someone had made an accusation against the boy, one which involved children. It was of course a lie, one meant to discredit and destroy the boy, and so it was that he called upon the group’s members to help him with getting ‘justice’ by reporting the accuser to the necessary departments on Facebook. His request for help fell on deaf ears, and his frustration built, his desperation obvious, and so it was that I decided to see if I could help him.”

“Why am I not surprised!”

“Don’t be cheeky Grasshopper.

As is my nature I looked into the situation with some attention to detail, and found that he had indeed been accused of certain unpalatable things. During the course of hours it transpired that the boy had reported the accusations to Facebook to no avail, and had also reported the accusations to the Police, with no actions being taken there. At this point I asked what he expected the members of the group to do that he hadn’t already done. He replied that we should ALL report the accuser to Facebook and to the Police so they would HAVE TO take notice.

I politely pointed out that neither Facebook nor the Police would take the word of any third party not directly involved. Which unfortunately acted as pouring Kerosine onto burning embers.”

“An explosion? Master Po?”

“Indeed Grasshopper, one of such magnitude that it burned out of control for days, with coals still glowing months later, and still the occasional spark flitters on the breeze, ready to reignite at the mention of my name.”

“All for not reporting someone to Facebook?”

“Correctamundo Grasshopper. Over several days of the boy’s spewed vitriol, myself and a few others were accused of bullying, being ‘Nazis’, by our inaction encouraging attacks on a member of the LGBTQ community,  and were impolitely informed by the boy that he would make YouTube videos exposing all of us for the evil uncaring unsympathetic bastards he believed us to be.”

“But you couldn’t have helped him anyway!”

“I wanted to. I spent hours looking into everything he had told me, and tried to find a solution to it all, but there was nothing. It didn’t help that he had been highly confrontational with the accuser, AND had sought help from others he also attacked when they said they could do nothing. One of whom had been a rape victim he told was a disgrace as what he was accused of was worse than her being raped.”

“Aw fuck no!”

“Watch your language Grasshopper!”

“Sorry Master Po, I was just… I mean… How did you deal with that!?”

“With practice we can all find that ‘happy place’ within us where we are at peace. I found my calm and blocked him from contacting me. If I prevent him being visible to me then anythigng he says becomes as nothing.”

“But, other people will see it.”

“Each has their own opinion. They have the options to believe or reject, to attack or walk away. From his lesson I learned that the ‘block button’ is valuable, and when others used it he was robbed of his voice. Of course he still resents to this day, and that is his choice, but I have peace, secure in the knowledge that I did my best and wasn’t the asshole of the story.”

“What happened to his book?”

“At the time there were members of that group who gave sage advice, which he rejected, calling those who gave it ‘amateurs’ and many other not so pleasant barbs. As such, what should have been a decent launch day became a non-event, and he’s remained in obscurity ever since.”

“That is a shame Master Po, but I believe Karma was in action there.”

“Couldn’t agree more Grasshopper, couldn’t agree more. If he had just accepted that we couldn’t help him with his problem, and considered the offered advice like an adult, then perhaps things would have been much better.

There is a lesson here though Grasshopper… Never let anger be your Master.”

“So, the art of dumpster fire avoidance is to ignore the cries of others?”

“No Grasshopper, hear the cries, try to help, but when your proffered hand is bitten, do not bite back, just walk away and push that block button.”

 (With apologies to Keye Luke and Radames Pera).

Once upon a time a writer had a simple task, to create something worth reading.

That writer could have been writing poetry, short stories, news articles or absolutely anything else that involved constructing the written word into viable sentences. Technology evolved beyond pen and paper, we created machines we could use to strike Ink onto paper, and even that evolved into far more efficient ways of doing it, such as the electric typewriter which gave respite to tired fingers.

Over the fullness of time, some absolute genius came up with the entire concept of word processing, and various other geniuses turned it into a reality, so no more did we need actual physical paper and physical ink to create work that the people could read.

There were even more advancements, such as being able to dictate the words rather than touch keyboards, in fact I’m dictating this. My fingers are very happy about that!

So, we have already made pen and paper “old hat”, even though not obsolete yet. Same applies to keyboards, as more & more people are taking to dictation.

What’s next?

The answer to that appears to be to replace the writer with technology.

Now I’m going to be totally honest and tell you that there is not a single article on this entire site that has been written by artificial intelligence, and there never will be. The reason behind this is that there are already bloggers out there who are harvesting other people’s blog posts, and with a few simple instructions their AI can rewrite the whole thing so that it has the same content without the same wording, thus avoiding any copyright issues, and whole process takes seconds.

Although I realise that this is incredibly useful, and would save a fantastic amount of time (and time, of course, is money!), I just couldn’t bring myself to do that. Having said that, I’m not blogging for a living, and to me there is something cathartic about sitting at a desktop computer and just rambling on about something.

Every blog post I create is a “stream of consciousness”, they haven’t been laboratory created, they are just me talking to you as a friend. Every article I’ve written on this site is created the same way, sometimes I will dictate, other times I will bash the keys manually, but it will always be me.

At the time of writing this, there is a growing interest and availability of artificially generated artwork. People just putting prompts, push enter, around 30 seconds later they have artwork that they could never have produced by other means. It caused a lot of arguments in the art community, and in the book community it has upset a lot of traditional cover artists. There are now authors doing their own covers with AI rather than buying them from professionals, and an upsurge in people providing $25 pre-created covers, undercutting the professionals by considerable margins. I think it’s all rather sad, as times are hard enough for those with creative businesses, so replacing them with machines does them a major disservice.

That doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t use AI to create art with, as I’m contemplating doing exactly that, but in my case the AI generated artwork would be something I use across this website as it would be considerably more cost-effective than paying several dollars per picture to any of the many image vendors out there. Yes, I realise that this is the same sort of thing as not buying directly from an artist, but I will also throw my hat into the ring here and state that I actually am an artist, I have had exhibitions, and painted everything from miniatures to murals, so I’m not going to be depriving anyone by not buying original art from them, as I wouldn’t have done that anyway, I just would have created my own. In fact there are a great many instances of my own artwork around this site. Passing the donkey work over to artificial intelligence will just enable me to get a lot of images faster, so I can focus on more important things and be able to release this site to the public quicker.

Okay, so you can now gather that I am okay with a bit of sleight of hand, being prepared to use artificially generated artwork, so why wouldn’t I use artificially generated text?

The answer is a simple one, with the artwork it is really just there for that aesthetic appeal, but what really matters is the content of the text, and were I to artificially generate that, it would lack in those things that make me ‘Me’. There are probably people reading this who wished it was written by artificial intelligence, as it would be more concise, and the grammar and punctuation would be significantly better, but that’s another thing about doing this myself, it comes from me, with all of the errors and inconsistencies, and when I dictate or even type, I do so with people in mind, actual human beings, and talk as if I’m actually talking face-to-face with you.

I embrace new technology, I love it, always have and always will, but the time is coming when entire novels will be written by robots, and eventually they will be indistinguishable from human writing, and when that day comes it’ll put all authors on borrowed time, as the market will  be flooded with automatically generated works of fiction written by Roboauthors who don’t need to be paid.

Those will be sad days indeed.

There is a saying, that you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

I find that to be a generalization and oversimplification of reality. The reason I say that is because I am an ‘Old Fart’ and as such I’ve known a lot of people of all age ranges and mental capacities, and I’ve seen examples throughout of people who can learn new skills at any age. I remember when the ‘home computer’ was just becoming available ( yes, I am that old), and I saw that although it took quite a while, the older generations began using them, they even acquired the nickname “Silver surfers”, the main issue being that people in their 50s, 60s and 70s (with a few even older) embraced the technology because they were still willing to learn.

Not long ago my Fiancée’s mother got her very first computer tablet, She is in her late 60s, and okay, I’ll be honest, it took a long time to for her to get used to using it, but once she got over the initial fear that she might break something, and got to basic grips with the functions, She was good to go and uses it often. More recently My Fiancée took her mom shopping for a new TV as the previous TV is a plasma one that has seen better days. They didn’t want anything huge, but my Fiancée was determined that it should be a ‘Smart TV’, hooked up to the Internet for surfing the absolutely massive amount of content available. That is now installed, and my future mother-in-law has been taught how to use it, and now online content such as YouTube has become her prime source of entertainment.

What’s the big deal?

Well, my Fiancée is German, as is her mother, both of whom were born in East Germany before the Berlin Wall went up, so access to technology wasn’t really in their background. Even after the wall came down tech was nothing that really found a place in their home, and it has only been over the past few years that there has been any kind of computer as a permanent fixture in her mother’s house. So I can absolutely applaud someone who has never accessed computer technology and the internet being prepared to broaden their horizons with smart technology.

As I said earlier, I am an old fart, right now I am 60 (as of April 3rd 2025) and remember times when there were no computers in schools, we didn’t even have pocket calculators never mind electronic whiteboards. However, I have always been what is considered an ‘early adopter’ of tech, largely because I have an insatiable curiosity and look at certain things with childlike awe. The unfortunate downside is that I grew up in a household in which my mother died when I was eight years old, and my father was basically an evil abusive control freak. This translates to other kids having a proper education, whilst I was dragged around the UK and as such ended up in several different schools, rarely stopping in one for more than a few months, and even then hardly attending classes as my father would keep me home for various reasons I won’t go into here.

The result of this is that I left school at the age of 15 with no qualifications.

It would be fair to say that pretty much everything I know is the result of my desire to learn, and my passion for burying my head in books to experience worlds far better than the one I lived in. I would read anything, regardless of whether it was fiction or non-fiction. By the time I was in my teens I had read the Encyclopaedia Britannica cover to cover, which is a bit redundant these days as people just Google knowledge now.

Once I escaped my father’s orbit, I was in a position to acquire some of the fancy gadgetry I had so far been denied, such as a typewriter, and then an electric typewriter, and of course, over steady progression, a desktop computer. This was new territory to me, and my one regret is that very early on I developed a bad habit, the habit of grabbing things while I could in case the opportunity disappeared. I wouldn’t take the time to learn things properly, to master all aspects of the technology, instead I would just learn the basics, enough to use the primary functions, and get on with that. It’s a habit I still have. I have a lot of software, tens of thousands of dollars worth, most of which I haven’t even scratched the surface of in terms of utilising it to its best capability.

There are certain sad facts, one being that when I was younger I had the time to learn how to use these things, but had no financial access to them. When I was older, I had the access, but didn’t have the time to spend on using them. There was never the ‘happy medium’.

Even at my current age I’m still open to learning new things, though in all truth my Asperger’s Syndrome ensures that I do struggle with some stuff, especially anything to do with numbers. I’ve used ‘Serif’ products to built a few ‘drag and drop’ websites in the past, mostly for other people, none of those sites exist any more, as both people and technology move on, and requirements change. The last website I built (aside from this one) was an author website for myself, using Adobe Muse, which was quite straightforward as it was modular, still mostly drag-and-drop, and I’d bought the third-party ‘Brilliant Adobe Muse’ book from which I learned enough so that I had all the usual bells and whistles of parallax scrolling et cetera to make it look pretty. It was a decent enough website, but nobody knew it was there, and I didn’t bother with marketing it as I didn’t have much in the way of ‘product’ to point people at. Not as though that mattered much as no sooner had I got the site exactly as I wanted it… It was doomed!

Unfortunately, as is often the case with huge corporations like Adobe, they make decisions that affect other people negatively, and one such decision was to cease offering the Adobe Muse service and platform, which given that my site was hosted by Adobe was a very bad thing. It wouldn’t have left me without a website, as it could be transferred to a different host, however, I would no longer have had background support, no more upgrades, no access to apps/widgets and so on, meaning that my site couldn’t evolve over time. That was unacceptable, so I found alternatives to Photoshop et cetera, and terminated my Adobe Creative Cloud account.

This is one of the issues with digital sharecropping, if your primary platform is on someone else’s territory then you are at their mercy, which was something I found out the hard way. I can’t say that the time and money I had invested in learning to create the Muse site was an absolute waste, as I learned a lot of transferable skills, but to have gone through all of it only to end up without a website was to say the least annoying.

Facebook has a similar disadvantage in that any groups we set up there could be deleted by Facebook without as much as a moment’s notice.

As I’ve said elsewhere on this site and in other places, I had no intention of setting up a Facebook group, never mind an actual website, but I saw that there was a need for it, and so here we are.

One of the benefits of being an old dog is that I’ve seen all this technology from its early days and have kept an eye on certain advancements. I also have the bonus of being patient. I regularly see people having an idea on Monday and by Tuesday it has been put into practice, despite the people involved having little to no clue what they are doing.

It’s a widespread problem that things have become simplified, and the approach to creativity these days is largely a matter of “how few buttons, can I push to achieve success?”. Now, it may sound idiotic, but even with the ability to have a website up and running in a matter of hours, this one that you are on right now is the result of years of work.

Am I crazy? Well, in a way I am, because I’m not taking advantage of the simplified approach to things. Instead, I spent a considerable amount of time studying an assortment of skills which are largely unapparent and pretty much invisible.

As already stated, I’m not a fan of digital sharecropping, so I have tried to make this site as independent as possible within my budgetary constraints. This means that I am not hosted by WordPress, therefore free to post whatever content I wish without falling foul of rules and regulations imposed by host/providers such as WordPress, Weebly and WIX. Obviously, there are certain observations and legal requirements, such as compliance with GDPR, which is a legal necessity but one which almost every author website I’ve ever looked at does not comply with. At its most basic, if your site can be accessed in the EU then you have a legal obligation to be compliant with GDPR and can be quite heavily fined if you are not. It’s another thing I had to learn about to set this site up properly.

I want to provide a lot of useful content to an international audience, and that means the site must be big, very big. It means that every aspect of it must work, at the very least providing basic usability, but I thought about things that go beyond the basics.

Example: the colour scheme of what you’re reading.

When I first created this website, I took a shortcut in the colour scheme. There are companies out there that spend millions of dollars in research money to figure out exactly how to keep your eyeballs on their product for the longest time. One of those companies is Facebook. I figured that Facebook had already done the groundwork for me, so I looked up the hex codes (colour references) for the Facebook colour scheme, entered those hex references into the fields, altered the shade very slightly, so it was as close to ‘Facebook blue’ as possible, without drawing legal action, and created the site that way. For me it was a no-brainer, their colour scheme is burned into the public consciousness, and that familiarity is valuable.

But… As the background to a blog, it is a bugger to read, as is standard black text on a white page, it’s okay for small snippets, but for lengthier posts or long threads it can be headache inducing. So I did some research into stuff like ‘colour theory’, there’s a lot of information on the Internet about how the eyes and brain respond to certain colours and combinations of colours, and after reading what the boffins had to say I decided that ‘Facebook blue’ had to go. It’s fine for social media website, which this one is on a technicality, but it isn’t fine for the blog architecture.

On the blue that I had previously the black text showed up, it was readable, but around 500 words into 1000 word post it was already making me blink more. Switching to white text make it even more legible but gave me eyestrain faster. Now, as writers, one of the last things we need is eyestrain, so I sought alternatives and ended up with the grey background. It doesn’t make the site look pretty, but it does make the black text stand out easier with the contrast not leading to eyestrain after five minutes. I did try the white text on the grey, but that was far too bright, almost as bad as white text on a black background (which I also tried).

Basically, I’ve approached this website as “rocket science”, trying to make sure that every single nut and bolt is as it should be, so the launch is more likely to be successful, and all passengers have a comfortable journey.

The original framework is WordPress. I was a complete WordPress novice and was warned how difficult it is to use and that it has a high learning curve, but for me it had certain practicalities that made it an attractive proposition. One of which was the adaptability, WordPress is arguably one of the biggest platforms in the field, it has a load of functionality as standard, and the cross compatibility and potential for customization is excellent, so I began learning about it. Going back to the comment I made earlier about digital sharecropping; another useful aspect of WordPress is that you’re not tied to their hosting. If you have WordPress hosting, then you are basically putting a WordPress tent up in a WordPress field, where WordPress rules and regulations apply. Independent hosting allows you to take that tent and pitch it anywhere you like, so you can enjoy the benefits of WordPress with hardly any of the drawbacks.

WordPress is good, but freedom is better, so with that in mind I looked at a different way, in fact several different ways, of creating a more useful architecture, initially looking at the likes of PeepSo to basically get a drag-and-drop out of the box Social Network that would require minimal tweaking. I watched every tutorial I could find, seeing what the most adaptable framework within my somewhat limited budget would be, eventually settling for Elementor, because it offered a significant amount of freedom to design, as well as an extraordinary capacity for me to expand, tailoring almost every part of the website to suit my needs. It was regularly scoring top marks from reviewers with no affiliation, so the opinions were more trustworthy. The compatibility with WordPress is high, and the number of add-ons, plug-ins et cetera ensures that there is very little that can’t be done, depending of course upon your budget.

It is an unfortunate consideration that functionality comes at a price, and when I first did the costing for this website, I found that I could make it for a minimum $12,000, which, given that other Social Media websites have ‘Angel Investors’ quite literally pumping millions of dollars into creating social media websites, is dirt cheap. The $12,000+ approach would have got this site to market a lot quicker, as I could have just paid for things to be done for me, but I decided to go it alone and work out how to do it myself, so I have total autonomy and nobody telling me what to do with my property.

When you can set up a site for nothing with Weebly, why so expensive?

The following is from ‘Zangi.com’ in 2021 but is fairly typical of the information I found out:

“The typical cost to create a social media app can range from $35,000 to $1,000,000+, depending on factors like features, software complexity, design, and whether or not you’ll be needing a team and/or will be developing from scratch. Also, the price will depend on whether or not you want an iOS app, an Android app, or Web app, or all of these platforms at once. Each additional platform will have its additional expenses, challenges, and specifications for each marketplace.”

They have a breakdown of costs on their site which shows what is involved and what each component of the site would cost to implement, such as Video Calling costing $40,000+

Now I know that they are referring to ‘apps’, however this site can be viewed on cell phones and tablets as well as via PC desktop, so it generally ticks all of the boxes.

Thinking about it realistically, it’s no wonder that sites like this aren’t common because unless you’re super-wealthy, or a genius programmer (and I am neither of those) it’s a lot of hard work and a very steep learning curve for an absolute novice.

As I said back at the beginning, I’m an old fart, I’ve seen a lot of websites come and go. There is an example (I won’t name names, but some of you will know what I’m talking about here) of a website that was launched for the horror community, and if I remember rightly it was built on a ‘Weebly’ framework, so although it had a degree of expandability, it wasn’t really fit for their purpose of having a paid-membership site with a the kind of capability it would need to serve the functions they stated it would have.

Despite having a board of several ‘industry professionals’ behind it, it appeared to have no cohesion, the design was dreadful, like something from the 1990s, the content was minimal, with very few engaging and relevant posts of use to writers, unless you wanted to show your pets in their gallery. Over an 18-month period hardly anything was done with the site framework or member engagement. It seemed from the beginning that it was a rush-job with nothing much of value going on. To say I was disappointed is an understatement.

It was all rather sad to watch something which could have been great for the community going so badly wrong, and at the start of 2022 the site suspended activity in readiness of a revamp, which at this point in time, over three years after it closed down, shows no sign of happening.

This is one of the reasons why I was determined not to rush into things with this website, but to take my time and do as good a job of it as I possibly could, which has meant a shed load of studying, a significant amount of trial and error, a lot of expense (some of it wasted) and a certain degree of hair loss from tearing it out in frustration.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that I have mastered the creation of a Social Media site, I can tell you with 100% honesty that what I had in my head is mostly still in there as I have needed to forego certain ideas in favour of practicality. As I’ve said, it has been a very steep learning curve, but I have to be honest in that it’s been gratifying too sometimes and it’s far from over, because even after I’ve launched this thing I’ll still be constantly working on making it better.

One thing I totally did not want is for people to come along to the site, take a brief look, go ‘meh’ and walk away because of a lack of content. There is a saying “Content is King” and I firmly believe in that, which is why I have made sure that there’s a whole bunch of posts already available, over a hundred forums ready to jump into, several groups at your disposal, and a lot of other stuff such as video content around the place. It has been created with the best of intentions and no shortage of effort.

It’s here, and you can take it or leave it, you can extract whatever value from it you like.

Am I expecting you to love what I have done here? Nope.

Am I expecting you to use the site, forums, groups etc? Nope.

Though it would be nice.

What happens with it is largely down to you, but if I have done my homework properly and, even at my age, can continue to learn, then surely there’s hope for us all to try something to make our time worthwhile and out environment a better place to hang out.